Monday, December 03, 2007

More on the Lewis-Anscombe controversy: a further reply to anonymous

The question, of course, is whether Anscombe thought Lewis had adequately formulated the argument against naturalism, or whether the she really thought the argument fundamentally wrongheaded. Her response to Lewis's revision suggests to me that this was not her response to the revised argument. So long as we don't have an answer to Lewis's question, we cannot rule out the possibility that the naturalist is stuck with saying:

"Nothing. Beliefs (if they exist at all given naturalism--of course this is denied by eliminativists) are strictly epiphenomenal. It seems to us that we hold beliefs for good reasons, but if we examine how these beliefs are produced and sustained, we find that reasons have nothing to do with it. We think they do, but this is just one more example of the 'user illusion.'"

If this is the only answer the naturalist can give, the Lewis-style argument against naturalism hasn't fallen yet. There are principled reasons for thinking that that is where the naturalist is forced to go, if the naturalist is consistent. I have a number of arguments, having to do with the nature of intentionality, truth, mental causation, logical laws, the unity of consciousness, and the reliability of our rational faculties that suggest to me that these questions are genuinely open. It isn't just a matter of our not happening to have a naturalistically acceptable solution right now (but we will have it as soon as we do enough brain science) it is that there is a logico-conceptual gap between the mental and the physical that looks for all the world to be unbridgeable.

There's still a problem of mental causation that, so far as I can tell, has not been satisfactorily solved by naturalists. Look at Jaegwon Kim's extensive work on the subject if you doubt me. Absent some antecedent confidence that a solution exists, we can't say that there we can confidently await a solution.

Anscombe's final response lacks the firm confidence of this statement in the original critique:

EA: But someone who does maintain it cannot be refuted as you try to refute him, by saying that it is inconsistent to maintain it and to believe that human reasoning is valid and that human reasoning sometimes produces human opinions.

The most she claims is that it hasn't been refuted by the revised argument as formulated. There is absolutely nothing in Anscombe's final comments to suggest that no such argument could be formulated.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

The most she claims is that it hasn't been refuted by the revised argument as formulated. There is absolutely nothing in Anscombe's final comments to suggest that no such argument could be formulated.

That’s not quite accurate. She said there was still much to criticize in Lewis’ revised argument. There is nothing to suggest in her later writing that she thought that following Lewis’ line of thought would ever result in some kind of refutation of naturalism.

You also seem to be overlooking the fact that she was not a naturalist herself. Recall what she wrote at the end of her reply:

I do not think that there is sufficiently good reason for maintaining the ‘naturalist’ hypothesis about human behavior and thought.

That indicates to me that there are other more fruitful approaches to take that differ from Lewis’ approach if one wants to avoid the conceptual misconceptions that many naturalists (and supernaturalists) get themselves tangled up in.


There's still a problem of mental causation that, so far as I can tell, has not been satisfactorily solved by naturalists.

Hasn’t been solved by supernatualists either. But that is to be expected. A problem that doesn’t really exist can’t be solved.

I’m beginning to understand that Lewis’ argument is really more of a critique against one theory of mind rather than an argument that is really capable of overturning a worldview. Even if most naturalists have serious misconception of how the mind works (and I think they do), one isn’t going to resolve them simply by turning from a non-theistic worldview to a theistic one. Theists share many of those same misconceptions.

Victor Reppert said...

Anon: That’s not quite accurate. She said there was still much to criticize in Lewis’ revised argument. There is nothing to suggest in her later writing that she thought that following Lewis’ line of thought would ever result in some kind of refutation of naturalism.

VR: That doesn't contradict what I said. I said that Anscombe didn't say the argument was hopeless in response to the revision. Anscombe is neutral on whether the argument could be adequately repaired. She also said that Lewis's revision corresponded better to the depth and difficult of the problem that was the first version or his critique.

As for theists not being able to solve the problem, it seems to me that a world-view according to which mental states are at the foundation of reality and are not evolutionary system by-products has an advantage.

By the way, I have a bone to pick with the way Anscombe explains naturalism. She defines it by saying that there is a naturalistic explanation for every event, including thought. But without some kind of principle of explanatory exclusion, this doesn't rule out every event having a supernatural explanation as well. Explanations, causal and non-causal, involve ontological commitments, and if the reasons-explanation involves a naturalistically unacceptable ontological commitment, (reasons exist), then naturalism still has problems.

Anonymous said...

As for theists not being able to solve the problem, it seems to me that a world-view according to which mental states are at the foundation of reality and are not evolutionary system by-products has an advantage.

A conceptually confused understanding of the mind is of no advantage to anyone, be they naturalist or supernaturalist. And to think that knowledge and belief are mental states is to be conceptually confused.. And to conceive of reasoning as some kind of cause and effect relationship looks to be very confused to me. Let alone mental causation.
I imagine you also would consider yourself some sort of substance dualist? And that you identify the person with their mind?

You are making a heck of a lot of assumptions about what the mind is and how it works. I see little reason for accepting those assumptions.



By the way, I have a bone to pick with the way Anscombe explains naturalism. She defines it by saying that there is a naturalistic explanation for every event, including thought. But without some kind of principle of explanatory exclusion, this doesn't rule out every event having a supernatural explanation as well.

Did she define it that way in her reply to Lewis? I don’t recall.